Eleven
by Musafreen
Summary: Eleven moments from the PJO series, each featuring a different character. Short, angsty and somewhat flowery. Now complete.
1. II

**Acknowledgments: **Drabbles are based off the titles of books 2-12 of the Everworld series by K.A. Applegate. Which is why the numbers start from 2.

**Warnings:** Very, very _short_ shorts. Not to mention angsty ones. Lots and lots of purple prose ahead, because I like to indulge myself once in a while. Have a desktop handy to bang you head against, just in case.

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**I****I**.

In the casino, all is bright and everyone is happy. She knows this like she knows her hair is black and the sky is blue.

She crashes into a man wearing what looks like a cowboy hat, and something of his clatters to the floor. The locket is surprisingly girly, with curves and vines all over it, and he looks puzzled when she hands it back to him.

It has fallen open, and there is a picture of two smiling little children, both of who share the man's glossy black hair. She wonders who they are.

He starts to answer, then breaks off looking puzzled. He tells her he doesn't know, and she can somehow feel the panic rising in him. In tandem, her mind flashes to a morose man in black with her little brother's frown, glancing at them before his attentions are occupied again.

The scent of lotus flowers drift over and images which were grasped at are now out of reach. The locket clatters to the ground again, rolling out of sight. This time, it is barely spared a glance.

In the casino, Bianca Di Angelo does not have to think about anything apart from how she will entertain herself next.


	2. III

**Warnings: **Melodrama. Oh, yes.

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**III.**

At the age of ten, she is about two feet shorter than her mother is, and so makes it a point to scream at her from the top of the stairs. He mother shouts back as loudly, her elegant evening gown and her latest boyfriend hanging off her.

These scenes have become _so_ common, her nanny and the housekeeper merely listen with their eyes turned towards the heavens. They've become so much of a gossip topic that her mother's date merely looks bored. She _knows_ she should stop and wait it out till her mother is back to being sober, however briefly; but the helpless tears she gets then makes her as miserable as these yelling matches they get into now.

She screams, her mother screams. Over them, another lightbulb explodes, just as so many have over the last two days, and she feels power surge through her in time to it.

Her mother shies away from the exploding shards, and screeches at her to stop it; tells her how she's exactly like her no-good father.

Thaila Grace is confused and terrified, and she responds to her mother by shouting some more.


	3. IV

**IV.**

Her voice was lost long ago. Her arms and legs have gone beyond the point of pain and into numbness.

Her eyes are fixed around her, onto the crumbling, reforming ruins of Othrys. Her mind grapples at the columns and beams with desperate tenacity, unwilling to let go. To have her thoughts straying into other things, other _people…_

Columns and beams, she thinks. Black marble, blacker granite. Gold edging on the brazier, as gold as Luke's-

The sky shifts and drives her another inch towards she ground. Her mouth opens and she tries to gasp, but her voice is long gone.

Columns. Not any of the classical Grecian styles, not even the composites. Plain, unfluted cylinders, wider than any she has seen before, even on Olympus. Straight and strong and unyielding. Devoid of any expressions of mathematics or philosophies; nothing that screamed humanity on them.

There may have been voices. She couldn't be sure.

Columns. Braziers. Gold fire.

_He_ says she's going to die.

Beams, she thinks. Broken ones. How could they support the weight of the ceiling? How could he do this to her? He'd _promised._

Annabeth Chase whimpers in despair, even as the weight of the sky is taken from her.


	4. V

**Notes:** I love drabbles. Oh you wunnerful, short things.

Anyway, this took a while, mostly because I couldn't decide on a character and a theme. The _actual writing_, funnily enough, took about ten minutes once I decided yeah, this would do.

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**V.**

Failure is what he's known for. Failure to protect and to guide. If someone couldn't do that, how were they ever worthy of seeking and discovering?

Years have passed, and the desperate gasps of the three children still haunt his dreams. Sometimes, the worst of it, he finds himself replaying the final scream of a brave little twelve-year old girl as the spirits of vengeance claw out her stomach.

These days, he tries not to forget, but to remember. Luke's roar of despair, Annabeth's shrill, agonized cries. And amidst all that chaos, he was the one who had to be dragged over the lines. He, who was supposed to be their protector.

_Remember_, and swear to never repeat it again, and damn the consequences.

The fury screeches something out, it's voice predictably shrill. Next to him, Percy yawns and stretches himself, apparently waking up from a refreshing nap.

Grover Underwood may be too scared to meet the Kindly One's eyes, but he _would_ protect the halfblood, and over his own life if necessary.


	5. VI

**Notes: **And another.

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**VI.**

When she is not babbling without reason or screaming about things _he_ never sees, she gathers him up into her arms and tells him stories.

They're about magic and fantastic beings. About serpent women and one-eyed giants. About golden eagles and chariots of the sun. About monsters chanting riddles. And about a man with wings on his feet, who could move fast, talk faster and who had somehow wormed his way into a godly pantheon already too full.

It is at this point that he _really_ starts to hate the stories. When he hears the hitch in her voice, and see her eyes glimmer with longing. When she hums some long-forgotten tune to herself and dances drunkenly, dragging him along by his arms in her wake.

When she says _he's _like that. Magical and powerful. Son of the man who circles the globe in an eyeblink. _Special. _He wishes she wouldn't. People call her enough things already, and their looks of pity mingled with fascination have grown to be much more than what he can take without flinching.

His mother claps, clasps his hands, and asks him brightly if he wants another sandwich.

Luke Castellan nods, because the last thing he wants to do is see her cry.


	6. VII

**Warnings: **Goody, more purple prose. It's at _least_ lavender.

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**VII.**

The war is over. The end of the world so narrowly missed. Rewards handed out, the gods triumphing.

But what he sees when he looks around are shrouds. So many of them burned that day at camp, fires magically enhanced by what everyone was feeling, that night turned to day and left him blinking his eyes in it's wake.

Her hand slides into his as they watch the embers fade out. In the light of their steady glow, he sees the grief-stricken, somber faces. Mourning friends, guilt-ridden visages of the ones who lived to tell their tales, horror and sadness and fear evident on each face.

He wonders about their mortal parents, and if it is fair to simply hand them a pretty china urn of ashes at the end of it all. But then again, they were being sent off by their survivors and their comrades. In war, he supposed that counted as family.

The fires die out, taking with them the final traces of so many friends and acquaintances. Loved or unloved, but undeniably brave.

To hell with immortality, thought Percy Jackson, he'd made the right choice.


	7. VIII

**Notes: **I suppose you're used to this by now; but melodrama ahead!

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**VIII.**

He says he's tired and he's fed up. He thanks her for being her. And he says goodbye.

She stares at the letter, the flimsy piece of paper fluttering in time with her shaking hands. It's amazing how her grip on it, so hard that it hurts, hasn't still torn it into two.

They don't deserve us, he says. They don't deserve our life, our love, or our blood. To hell with them, and let me make my own way.

That's not the point, she wants to scream at him; but it's not like he'll be around to hear it. All that's left of him and his meager possessions is this piece of paper left by her pillow.

For the first time in a long time, she feels lost. Not scared, ashamed or powerless (all those things are hardly unusual), but _lost._ One thing in life she was sure of is her place. It is under her father, against everyone else. Scoffing at the world and sneering at the pathetic. Harsh and unyielding, perhaps, but always in the shade of her birthright.

And now _C_hris has taken that one solid thing in her life and thrown it at her face.

She crumples the letter in her hand, refusing to admit there are tears pricking at her eyes.

Clarisse La Rue may have been a bully of epic proportions, but she was _not_ going to be a traitor.


	8. IX

**IX.**

They're granite, possibly. Hard and brittle. The faces scrunched up in horror at what they were forced to witness before their lives abruptly ended in stone. And around him, _with_ him, are beings who make the statues seem almost comforting.

He glances at his knife, the celestial bronze edge still sleek and sharp, in spite of all he has done with it. And even after all that, he's still… uncertain. He'd thought he'd gotten over that a while ago.

As if someone had just peeked into his mind, he's summoned. His heart pounds and his fingers tremble as he faces the Titan Lord on his makeshift throne and answers his questions. He does not know from where he gets the courage (or the idiocy) to elude and to hide his educated guesses. More importantly, he's not sure why he's doing it.

The Titan Lord knows. He can see that. He can also see that Luke, who was filled with so much more bitterness and hatred than he ever was, is fighting him with whatever is left of his self.

For Ethan Nakamura, it is a crossroad; a point in time where he starts to decide which end of the scales to balance.


	9. X

**X.**

Up here, the stars are clearer than they ever were down below. They stretch out endlessly above her, almost swallowing her speck of a self in their sheer enormity.

She's no stranger to seeing things she's not supposed to see, but this is different. Glimpses pass in front of her eyes, swirling her brains until she can barely keep track of what she is and where she's standing. She sees death. Darkness, horror, pain. She sees tiny bits of love and life and laughter too, and it only makes the contrast more jarring as they're swallowed up by _oceans_ of despair.

The only reason she doesn't protest when he takes the jar is because there doesn't seem to be much point holding on to it. And because there isn't really any point, she allows herself to be led to the little girl tending the fire.

For a brief moment there is warmth, and the pinpricks of light expand to the size of baseballs.

Rachel Dare can't make much sense of what's happening inside or outside of her head at that point, but she decides that holding onto that moment is important.


	10. XI

**XI.**

As the shrouds burn in the air after the battle of the labyrinth, she keeps her eyes fixed on the distant silhouette of the Pine.

It was battle, after all. There were sides. There were strategies. And all was fair in love and war. Double agents (she refused to use the word _spy_) were practically a requirement.

Her face is screwed up into a tear-stained mask, and she has the skill to make her eyes water more if she needs to. Around her, her siblings are sniffling. The other campers look grim or sad in various degrees, and stare at the shrouds as if to etch them into memory.

She has no need for that, naturally. Lord Kronos would win; because he was stronger, more powerful. And because the gods were essentially spoiled little children squabbling over _nothings._ And when that happened, she would be a somebody in the new regime. Not a universally undervalued daughter of a love-goddess.

Silena Beauregard had always prided herself on choosing the winning side.


	11. XII

**Notes: **This isn't exactly how I envisioned the end. There isn't much closure, and the time period is not where I want to conclude things.

But anyway. Thanks, you guys, for sitting through all the angst. :D

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**XII.**

He's impatient. His hands are twitching themselves together, his foot is tapping and all he wants to do is get things done and get out already.

The woman clearly disagrees. She's pretty young, in her mid twenties or so. She's telling him about the husband and child who are now lost to her, and refuses to let him go and mope around in his own corner of misery.

He eventually gives up and really listens. He misses his sister as much as she misses her family, and only the fact that he's traded in his tears for grim determination stops him from crying with her. After all, they've both been left behind by the people they love.

It is when she's talking about her baby girl's beautiful little feet (and, ergo, when he's thinking about silently slipping away) that her voice stops and her eyes cloud over with confusion. He doesn't ask, but she tells him that it is difficult to picture her now. She can't quite remember the shade of blue her eyes are.

At that, his fists clench and his breath hitches in his throat. It's easy enough for him to remember Bianca, but the woman forgetting her family scares him. It means that whatever he's worked for so far might be for nothing.

The ghost looks at him for comfort, but all Nico Di Angelo can spare is an uncertain shrug.


End file.
